I had a dig around in the garage for the smoke generator and found it, it needed a bit of a scrub up as you can see

I started by drilling a 12mm hole either side in the sides of the bin near the bottom for ventilation and then cut a couple of cake cooling trays to size with a pair of cutters. I then drilled two holes either side of the bin and fed a piece of 10mm threaded rod through for the cake tray to sit on

I then did the same again higher up the bin to allow another cake tray to sit so I have have 2 trays to put stuff on.

That is about all that needed doing to get going and so after a scrub of the generator I put an even mix of hickory and oak dust in the generator

With a tea light under the raised end of the generator I lit the light and let it burn for a while to get the dust smoking

I then put the generator in the bottom of the bin and put the racks back in, the first one loaded with brie and camembert

Then the next tray went in and is loaded with medium cheddar and red leicester.

Put the lid on and leave to smoke, the generator will smoke for around 12-14 hours.
Just had a quick peep and it is smoking lovely :thumbup:

Have a full batch of cheese on the go at the moment and have just been shopping for some fish, I have 3 nice sides of salmon and 4 fresh rainbow trout to smoke. Going to get them in a cure now so I can start them in the smoker tomorrow :thumbup:

Here is the story so far, 2 of the salmon sides ready for the cure

With the cure

Third side with cure

The cure is a dry mix of rock salt, brown sugar and black pepper

Next the trout, 4 beauties ready for the filleting knife

A quick filleting session and pin bones removed they are now in a cure as well

You can see just how quick the salt cure starts to extract the water content from the fish, these have been in the fridge no longer than half an hour

Just had a sneaky look under the lid at the cheeses, they are coming on lovely, the smell is so good everytime I walk past the smoker :yes:

Looking good, especially like the smoked trout. A friend has some for me to smoke as soon as we get suitable weather. Your smoker looks similar to mine - but shinier! Mine has had a couple of years' use and lives outside.

Looks nice! I've got an Aldi garden incinerator outside which I bought ages ago to convert to a hot smoker. Just trying to find time to do it, have only had a couple of weeks at home since June and I'm about to go to France for five weeks.

I was thinking along the lines of putting the paella burner under the bin as the main heat source, possibly with some insulation around the outside. Haven't worked out how to make smoke yet: one thought was a separate tin with the CSG in it linked in to the big bin with a tube.

welsh wizard wrote:I have found it difficult to acquire bulk dust for my pro Q smoker other than buy lot and lots of small 200g bags which give you two and a bit smokes. However I have now found this site www.hotsmoked.co.uk their 5kg sack is £30 which is c£75+ for the same volume from ProQ, which represents excellent value IF you use that sort of volume. I just decant it from the plastic sack into a air tight bucket - so simple.They also sent me a 3 pack of different flavour woods with my order foc, but I dont know if this is usual practice so please dont quote me on that. Their service is excellent, and the lady at the end of the phone is extremely helpful and really knows her stuff.

I know that there were issues with the dust they get from Germany (when their supplier changed the spec), but they tell me that it was sorted out and that their dust works fine in the ProQ csg. I've still got loads left from the bags I bought from them before the alleged problems, so can't yet confirm that this is the case.

For you, the delivery would probably be more than the product - a bag of oak or beech dust is (or was) around £7. I can't remember whether that's a 20kg or 25kg bag, I think it's 20kg. However, the cherry and apple are far more costly, about £35 - 40, but if I remember correctly they're in 25kg bags. With postage etc that should still work out at less than 25p per 12 hours smoking.

Looking online, delivery of a sack shouldn't be much more than £15. Given the potential saving, it may be worth a <£25 gamble on some oak or beech?

Sorry to resurrect such an old and very long thread, but I`m having issues finding oak dust in bulk the supplier mentioned in this thread doesn't appear to be with us any longer I used to buy 20Kg bags of oak/hickory and apple but my supplier for this has also gone out of business. I did find hotsmoked.co.uk but even though it may be cheaper than buying 200g that's still way, way more than I used to pay for 20kg. Your help is appreciated.

I am pleased that you resurrected the thread, Brennor. I was looking for it the other day.

I had a go at using the ProQ earlier this week, and I just cannot get it to work. What's not to work, I can understand you asking. I light the dust, I get a smoulder, I leave it in a suitable area - I first tried my Hark smoking box and then moved to my hooded barbecue that decent air circulation - and it will not stay "alight" for more than a minute or two.

On advice from Gus, I tried microwaving the sawdust to dry it out, I also put the dust (I think it's Tas Oak, a eucalypt) through a Thermomix to get it fine enough - and then added back some more coarser dust in case it was too fine. I repacked it a couple if times, in case I had it too tight/too loose.

All to no avail. I must have had 15 goes at getting it going. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong/not doing?

One thought is that there is something wrong with the dust, so I will try some other - but it is dry, I have used it for hot smoking many times, and several times I had it in the proQ glowing like a cigarette (but far bigger) when I left it to do it's stuff.